


dulce et decorum est

by hardboiledmeggs



Series: a borrowing of bones [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: BAMF Sharon Carter, Camping, Established Relationship, F/M, Pacific Northwest, Sexual Content, Sharon Carter feels, Steve Rogers Feels, Tent Sex, mission bonding, steve and sharon are too similar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-10
Updated: 2016-06-10
Packaged: 2018-07-14 07:29:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7160087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hardboiledmeggs/pseuds/hardboiledmeggs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve and Sharon rough it in the wilderness and find some truth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	dulce et decorum est

**Author's Note:**

> This was written in response to a tumblr prompt from jadziabear for Steve/Sharon, roughing it in the wilderness. It's also the second part of a series, so if you're interested in seeing how we got to the established relationship in this installment, I'd recommend reading the previous story. 
> 
> Submit Sharon/Steve prompts, or just cry with me about how great these two are, on tumblr [here](http://hardboiledmeggs.tumblr.com)!
> 
> Enjoy!

Sharon leaves Steve in Chiang Mai. Saying goodbye to him hurts, makes her chest feel tight, like she can’t get enough air in her lungs. But he smiles and kisses her a final time before putting her in a taxi to the airport, and she hopes (she _hopes_ ) that the time between this meeting and the next one will be short.

 

And then three months later, Sharon finds a plain, white envelope in the mailbox at her Berlin flat. Inside are a series of flight tickets terminating at a tiny municipal airport in Washington State. On the final ticket, in the corner, in black ink, someone has drawn a circle around a five-pointed star. Sharon packs her bags.

 

*

 

Thirty-six hours later, she’s finally stateside. The Pacific Northwest is characteristically cool and wet; by the time the rickety plane lands, the view out her window is nearly entirely obscured by rain and fog. As she disembarks, she clings to a railing as she descends down a flight of slippery steps. At the bottom, a gawky teen wearing an orange vest and a badge that reads “OLYMPIC RENT-A-CAR” holds up a laminated placard with the name “KATE” written in block letters. Sharon knows it’s for her.

 

She’s given the keys to a decade-old Chevy, and inside the glove compartment is a state map with an X drawn around a town that, judging by the size and shape of it’s marking dot, can’t contain more than a few hundred people. Next to the X, Steve’s written “Lucky Logger.” The sight of his handwriting – loose, loopy, and artistic – is familiar and comforting. Her heart glows. Sharon sets the map on the passenger seat, slides the key into the ignition, and tries not to think about what Steve’s mouth felt like between her legs.

 

*

 

Tucked along a winding highway lined by dark, misty forest, the Lucky Logger turns out to be a real dive – with wood paneling on the walls, stained linoleum on the floor, and sparse crowd of roughnecks who eye Sharon suspiciously as she walks in.

 

Considering the sad attempts she’s already seen Steve make at being inconspicuous, for once he’s pulling it off. It takes her a moment to spot him – sitting at the bar with a can of Rainier and a bowl of pretzels. He’s grown out his beard a bit and shaved his head, leaving just a half-inch of stubble mostly hidden under a dingy Seattle Seahawks ballcap. He’s traded in his soft leather jacket for a tan Carhartt vest and a flannel shirt. Sharon gives him an approving glance as she takes the seat next to him.

 

“I’m buying,” he tells the bartender, nodding in Sharon’s direction, and a cold can of beer appears on the counter in front of her.

 

“Thanks,” she smiles at him and he nods, letting just the corner of his mouth quirk up – the slightest betrayal of whatever stoic mountain-man cover he’s been working on.

 

Steve brings the can of beer to his mouth and just before he takes a drink, he murmurs, “There’s a HYDRA agent holed up thirty miles from here.”

 

“In the woods? Doing what?” Sharon tries to keep her expression light and flirtatious. But she’s spent most of her adult life as a Fed, and the idea of a showdown in the middle of nowhere can’t help but raise her hackles. _Ruby Ridge_ , she thinks. _Ted fucking Kaczynski._

 

“Hiding from _us_ ,” Steve tells her, raising his eyebrow. “I’ll show you the file once we hit the trail.”

 

Sharon frowns. “The trail?”

 

Steve gives her a stunning, true smile and tosses a ten dollar bill onto the bar. “You like camping, right?”

 

*

 

Sharon follows Steve’s car to the seedy truckers’ motel where he’s been staying for the last two weeks. She showers immediately, washing away the sticky, stale residue that comes from days of international travel. After, Sharon emerges wrapped in a threadbare towel, and Steve hands her a stack of hiking gear to change into – a thermal undershirt, a windbreaker, thick hiking socks and sturdy boots.

 

“Sam helped pick it out,” Steve says, turning a little pink and avoiding her eyes. “And Wanda. I’m sorry if…if the sizes aren’t right.”

 

Sharon imagines the three of them huddled together and arguing over fabric colors and shoe widths. “I’m sure it’s fine,” she says, taking the bundle of fabric and pinning it against her chest.

 

It’s then that Steve notices her bare shoulders, still flecked with drops of water. His eyes turn dark, his face goes from pink to red; he actually _licks his lips_.

 

“It’ll be dark soon,” he says. “We should get going.”

 

“Sure,” she says, but she knows what’s coming, and she knows to wait for it.

 

He hesitates for a moment, wearing the same expression he had the first time he kissed her. Sharon can sense the war inside him: how the part of him that wants to seize the moment fights against his natural reservation.

 

Steve reaches out suddenly, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her against his chest. “ _Fuck_ , I missed you,” he gasps, just a second before his mouth lands on hers.

 

He’s everywhere at once – arms and hands and mouth, clutching her desperately, threading his fingers into her hair, grinding his hips against hers. This is what Sharon remembers about him, the thing that wakes her up panting and wet in the middle of the night: the way he comes unhinged as soon as he decides to let himself go; the way he moans and shivers when she touches him, as though every inch of his skin is hyper-sensitive and touch-starved; the hot slide of his tongue against hers and the solid press of his body and—

 

He pulls back, holding her by the shoulders at arm’s length.

 

“We have to go,” he says weakly. His eyes plead with her to help him help himself, to put on the clothes he’s given her (the clothes now lying crumpled on the floor) and forge ahead with the mission.

 

He has strongly overestimated her capacity for mercy. She drops the towel and drops to her knees, opening the front of his blue jeans pulling down his briefs and sucking his cock into her mouth.

 

Steve lets loose a string of profanities and affirmations; his hands clutch helplessly in the air for a moment before settling on Sharon’s head. He’s careful not to grab her too hard – too careful – and Sharon pushes him purposefully. She sets a powerful, intense rhythm with her mouth and one hand, cupping his balls, gripping his ass, making it messy and wet, then she sinks her other hand between her legs and makes sure Steve sees it. He pulls one of his hands away from her and clamps it over his mouth when he comes to stifle his own shout.

 

Sharon’s only just swallowed him down when he wobbles and his knees buckle, sending him to the floor ass-first, with his pants only half pushed down his thighs.

 

He leans back against the filthy carpet; he drapes one arm over his eyes. His chest heaves. Between his legs, his cock curves up against his belly, flushed and wet and only just starting to show signs of softness.

 

He’s quiet for a long moment, and Sharon starts to worry if she’s miscalculated. Maybe the mission _was_ more important.

 

But then Steve sits up and pulls her to him, kissing her rubbed-raw mouth gently. She can feel him trembling under her hands. His head drops to her shoulder.

 

“How do you know me so well,” he breathes against the side of her neck. His beard scratches against her skin. “How do you know me so goddamn well.”

 

She smiles and kisses him again, long and slow. He gathers her into his lap, cupping her bare breasts with his hands, bowing his head to kiss each of her nipples.

 

Sharon sighs, “At this rate…”

 

She gasps as he sinks a hand between her legs, pushing two thick fingers inside her.

 

“Why do you think I wanted to leave?” he gives her a dopey smile, “Now we’ll never get out of here.”

 

His fingers curl inside her and Sharon’s fingers dig into his shoulders. She feels a pang of guilt.

 

“No, let’s go,” she says, trying to squirm away. Steve’s right – she does know him well, and she knows that he’ll be disappointed later if they don’t leave now.

 

He pulls his fingers out of her and sucks them into his mouth.

 

“ _Christ_ ,” she scowls, pressing her thighs together to try to dampen the ache of an arousal that won’t be satisfied, “That’s not fair.”

 

Steve slides his fingers out of his mouth with a _pop_ and grins.

 

“You’re one to talk.”

 

*

 

As he drives them to the trailhead, Steve hands her a thick file. It’s more or less what she expected – a profile of a front-line HYDRA agent who had worked diligently to undermine everything SHIELD had ever strived for. What she doesn’t expect are a handful of heavily-redacted documents written in Cyrillic.

 

Steve glances at the folder in her lap, reaches over and jabs his finger at the paper. “That puts him in Siberia,” he gives her a pointed look and puts his hand back on the steering wheel, gripping the vinyl so hard his knuckles turn white. “After that, he ends up in New Brunswick, two miles from Camp Lehigh. And then he’s in DC. He was fucking _there_ , Sharon.”

 

She closes the file. She gets it now, why the mission was important enough to risk pulling her out of Berlin.

 

“Then let’s get him.”

 

*

 

Considering that they’re walking into this with a mission to capture or kill, their surroundings as they trek into the tree line are jarringly idyllic. It’s not raining exactly, but a fine, misty fog surrounds them, wetting their clothes and packs and making Sharon’s hair curl. The forest is quiet, save for the occasional birdsong or the rustle of fern fronds as fattened water droplets slide down their stalks. Sharon’s often thought of herself as a creature of the city – the kind of person who functions best against a backdrop of neon and skyscrapers and the frenetic hum of traffic – but there’s something magnetic about this place. She likes the way the sod feels under the tread of her boots and the way the gray daylight filters green through the tree canopy above them.

 

Steve walks ahead of her, and she has to strain to hear him as he tells her that after Chiang Mai he had ended up back in Wakanda, puttering around with Sam and Wanda and trying not to think too much about Bucky. There’s always been something sad about him – she’d noticed it when she’d first been assigned to his detail years ago – and she senses it now. She hears how he tries to keep his voice light and neutral, but she sees how his jaw tenses and his hands clench.

 

The forest turns cooler and darker as they walk. They set up camp in a clearing next to a gigantic, ancient Sitka spruce: a lightweight two-man tent, a pair of bedrolls, a camp stove, and a pair of electric lanterns. Steve works open two cans with his Swiss Army knife and heats up dinner. They’re still a day’s hike away from their target’s cabin, but the idea of lighting a fire makes Steve nervous, and Sharon doesn’t press the issue.

 

The light fades as they eat together, perched side-by-side on a fallen log.

 

In Thailand, they’d shared a handful of meals – most often, they had ordered in to avoid having to put on clothes, but a few times they’d gone out to eat, and once Steve had cooked for her in the tiny kitchen where they’d first made love. It’s something Sharon savors; eating together feels normal and domestic, and there’s so little of that in either of their lives.

 

When he’s finished off his beef stew, Steve pulls a notebook out of his pack – a little yellow-covered waterproof journal. Sharon thinks it might be for field notes, but then she sees the way his brow creases, and the irregular lines of his pencil as it moves across the page. She scoots closer to him and peers over his arm. He’s sketched out the cluster of mushrooms sprouting from a rotting nurse log in front of them. It’s perfect – the lines, the texture, the shading; it’s just right.

 

“You’re good at that.”

 

He shrugs and looks up at her.

 

“What are you good at?”

 

Sharon rolls her eyes and shrugs, giving him an uncomfortable smile. She doesn’t suppose “shooting and fucking” is the kind of answer he’s looking for.

 

“I don’t know.”

 

“You don’t know.”

 

She takes a deep breath and rubs her hands over her face.

 

“SHIELD was…my whole life. I don’t just mean my career, I mean—Ever since I was a kid, I thought of it as this shining beacon of justice and hope and _rightness_. It meant so much to me. To my family,” she glances over at Steve and he nods. Talking about Peggy is still painful. “It was all I ever wanted to do. And now that it’s gone – and not just gone, but _gone_ – I feel like. Like I’ve been…Like I’m cut loose. Just drifting around, doing nothing. I’m on this taskforce in Berlin,” she waves her hand dismissively, “but most days I don’t even know if I know what a terrorist _is_.”

 

His expression goes soft. He looks at her intently with his brow creased.

 

Sharon groans, “Don’t you dare pity me.”

 

“I don’t. I’m not,” he says quietly. “I just—I get it.”

 

Sharon feels a familiar tug at her heart. The way Steve looks at her makes her feel warm and whole. She knows enough about her life – and his – to know how dangerous this all is. She can feel them, together, getting in too deep; she knows that whatever comes next for them, after this mission, after they’re forced to go their separate ways again, will be excruciatingly hard. She wonders if he knows it, too.

 

“I’m tired,” she tells him, and she looks away, “Jet lag. I’m just gonna—“

 

She stands and brushes pine needles off her jeans, then crawls inside the tent. Sharon kicks off her boots and slides into her sleeping bag fully dressed. When Steve joins her fifteen minutes later, she pretends to be asleep.

 

*

 

Sharon doesn’t know what time it is when she wakes up. Bright daylight filters grey and orange through the nylon tent above her. At her back, through layers of downy sleeping bag insulation, she can feel Steve pressed against her, already awake, with his arm slung around her waist. He senses that she’s awake, too, and presses a kiss to the back of her neck. She turns her head and smiles into her pillow; she remembers how insatiable he is in the morning.

 

True to form, he unzips the edge of her sleeping bag and pulls her closer, letting his body heat counteract the morning chill. He runs his hands over her clothed body – cupping her breasts, tracing the lines of her hips and shoulders. Sharon’s breath hitches and speeds up; she arches her back and presses against him.

 

Steve’s hand stills just before reaching under the waistline of her pants. His fingers spread wide on her stomach.

 

“Do you mind?” he breathes against the back of her neck.

 

“Do I—“ Sharon turns and looks at him, incredulous. “Are you for real?”

 

Steve looks away, blushing slightly. Even with a beard and shorn hair, he’s unbearably handsome, all sculpted cheekbones and long eyelashes. Sharon feels a swell of gratitude and affection take hold of her.

 

“I just like to be sure,” he says with his eyes still cast down.

 

“Hm,” Sharon smiles, quiet and kind. She’s on to him – she has been for a while – but she’s not interested in embarrassing him. “You like it when I say yes.”

 

Steve chews his lower lip; his eyes go dark when he looks back at her. _Christ_ she thinks, _even the idea gets him off._

 

“It’s important,” he argues.

 

“It is.”

 

She turns onto her back, and looks up at him. Propped up on his elbow, he looms over her slightly, watching her face. She catches his gaze with hers and goes serious.

 

“ _Yes_ ,” she says, and she puts everything she has behind it. She wants him to hear what it means – that she’s with him, that she doesn’t want to be anywhere else, that he means everything to her.

 

Something melts behind Steve’s eyes, something gives way, and he leans into her. He kisses her with a tenderness and conviction she’s used to feeling from him, but then it becomes something else, something more. There’s a shift between them; Steve feels softer, more open, more determined than he has before.

 

He opens her blue jeans and pulls them, along with her underwear, down her hips and off completely. His hand presses between her legs; his fingers slide inside her, the heel of his palm presses against her clit and rocks against her.

 

She comes once, twice, three times, maybe more, until she isn’t sure where one orgasm ends and the next begins. By the time he finally kicks off his own pants and slides inside her, she feels weak and boneless, overstimulated and oversensitive. Steve goes slow at first – moving in deep, steady strokes – but then he tilts her hips, adjusts the angle, nudging the head of his cock against the cluster of nerves just inside her. It tips her over the edge again, into a shuddering, chaotic climax. Her hands grab the sleeping bags around them and the fabric twists into her fists, her heels dig into the earth; Steve presses a heavy hand over her mouth to muffle her cries, which come too loud and too uncontrollable for the quiet forest around them.

 

At the end of it, she’s limp and trembling and covered in a thin film of sweat; her heart pounds, tears stream from the corners of her eyes. All she can think of is Steve – how much she’s wanted him, and how much it means to have him, now.

 

“What is it?” she hears Steve’s voice dimly; he sounds frantic and horrified. His fingers touch her temples, and she knows that he’s seen her crying. “Am I—Did I—“

 

He starts to pull away from her, but Sharon musters the energy to clamp her legs around his waist, holding him inside her. “Don’t go,” she pleads weakly, wiping at her cheeks, “I’m sorry. I’m just—I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

 

“Nothing’s wrong with you,” he says, and he’s so earnest, so honest.

 

“Please,” she leans up to kiss him, “I’m happy. I swear, I am. Keep going.”

 

And he does.

 

 

*

 

They follow Steve’s GPS unit along labyrinthine, barely-marked trails through the trees, and make it to the cabin in the woods late in the afternoon, leaving their packs half a mile behind the tree line. A persistent, drizzling rain has left them both damp and chilled. As they approach, they both pull out their pistols, holding them with the muzzle pointed to the ground and the safeties off. It’s unnerving to see Steve without the shield; he seems strangely vulnerable, and it makes Sharon paranoid. By the time they make it to the font door of the dilapidated building, Sharon’s heart is pounding.

 

They stand on either side of the door. Steve turns the knob, and it opens easily and quietly. Sharon’s quick to cover him as he moves inside, taking in the musty front room, filled with stacks of newspapers, piles of garbage and no signs of life.

 

A folded leather card holder sits on a coffee table in front of a stained fabric couch. Sharon leans over, flips it open and a SHIELD badge stares back at her. The man in the identification photo is the same man from Steve’s file – the HYDRA agent who had been so complicit in Bucky Barnes’ decades of captivity and torture.

 

Steve’s engrossed in a pile of documents and photographs spread out on a card table when a man comes around the corner, out of an adjacent room. Sharon sees him first. In half a second, she sizes him up: long hair, dark clothes, the man from the file. He has a gun raised, aimed at Steve’s back, finger on the trigger. Sharon’s arms snap up; a squeeze, a _pop_ , a flash of light. The bullet hits the man through the left temple and he drops; the floorboards rattle under the dead weight.

 

Sharon sucks in a quick breath. Steve’s hand lands heavy on her shoulder. She goddamn hates shooting people.

 

“Hope you weren’t planning on an interrogation,” she says, and her voice sounds small.

 

Steve looks at her; his brow is furrowed. His hand squeezes her shoulder. “You okay?”

 

Sharon glares. “Stop it. That’s him, right?”

 

Steve nods and pulls back, holstering his gun. “Yeah.”

 

A pool of blood around the man’s head grows, dark and wet, soaking into the wooden floor.

 

“Then let’s get the hell out of here.”

 

*

  
They fuck once more, in the cramped back seat of Sharon’s rental car, pulled into a sheltered spot along the side of the road. They’re both tense and a little frayed at the edges – because of what happened in the cabin, and because they know that they’re about to separate again for who knows how long.

 

“I love you,” he says as she straddles his hips.

 

He isn’t the first man to be inside her and say it. “Yeah,” Sharon says, and kisses Steve to keep him from saying any more.

 

After, she drives them back to Steve’s motel. He rides next to her; a thick, awkward silence sits between them.

 

“You didn’t believe me,” he says, and it almost startles her.

 

“What?”

 

“I love you.”

 

He looks at her squarely; it’s disconcerting to be the subject of _that much_ sincerity, but Sharon looks over and holds his gaze for a long moment. She feels suddenly nervous. Her heart pounds so heavy she can feel it in her throat.

 

“Okay,” she says, and Steve blinks and looks away, trying hard not to look disappointed. Sharon looks back at the road, but reaches across the center console and grabs his hand. “Me too. I love you, too.”

 

 _Dangerous_ , she thinks. _Stupid_ , she thinks. _I love him_ , she thinks.

 

“I’m going back to Wakanda. You could—“ he starts, but she cuts him off. She knows where the conversation is going, and what he’s about to ask her.

 

“I have a job.”

 

“I thought you hated it.”

 

“I have an apartment. And friends.” Steve winces. “I have a goddamn cat. I can’t just disappear tomorrow.”

 

“I like cats,” he offers, smirking at her.

 

Sharon scoffs. “ _You_ do not like cats. I can tell.”

 

“I really don’t.” He smiles, caught, and it feels good to see him smile in the midst of all this. “I’d like _your_ cat, though.”

 

It’s the kind of silly, sentimental stuff that usually makes Sharon cringe, but instead she has to purse her lips to keep from matching his goofy smile with one of her own.

 

She pulls into the motel parking lot, turns off the engine, and leans back in her seat. She glances at the car’s clock – she still has to make it to the airport in time to catch a flight to Seattle, and then back to Germany.

 

“It’d be hard to get out without being tracked,” she says, chewing her lower lip and staring at the rain-covered windshield. Taking a _vacation_ a couple times a year can escape notice, but booking a ticket to Wakanda would probably raise some red flags.

 

“We can get you out,” he tells her, and Sharon turns to him with a raised eyebrow. “We can,” he insists.

 

She takes a long, deep breath. “Okay.”

 

“Okay?”

 

“Okay.”

 

Steve swallows and nods. For a moment, he looks overcome, and like he wants to say something more, but he keeps quiet. Instead, he unbuckles his seatbelt, opens the door and climbs out of the car.

 

Sharon’s barely made it out of the car when he meets her, grabbing her and tugging her against him. His body curls around her; in a low, fierce voice he tells her, “I’m not fucking saying goodbye to you.”

 

Sharon turns her face into his shoulder to hide her smile. “Then tell me something else.”

 

Steve takes her face in his hands and looks down at her. The look on his face is inscrutable – Sharon can’t tell if he wants to punch a wall or cry. Droplets of rain catch in his beard and soak her hair.

 

“I love you,” he says, “and…and I’ll see you soon.”

 

Sharon swallows around a lump in her throat. She blinks away the rain in her eyes and smiles. “I believe you.”


End file.
